Objects of Translation offers a nuanced approach to the entanglements
of medieval elites in the regions that today comprise Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and north India. The book--which ranges in time from the early
eighth to the early thirteenth centuries--challenges existing narratives
that cast the period as one of enduring hostility between monolithic
"Hindu" and "Muslim" cultures. These narratives of conflict have
generally depended upon premodern texts for their understanding of the
past. By contrast, this book considers the role of material culture and
highlights how objects such as coins, dress, monuments, paintings, and
sculptures mediated diverse modes of encounter during a critical but
neglected period in South Asian history.
The book explores modes of circulation--among them looting, gifting, and
trade--through which artisans and artifacts traveled, remapping cultural
boundaries usually imagined as stable and static. It analyzes the
relationship between mobility and practices of cultural translation, and
the role of both in the emergence of complex transcultural identities.
Among the subjects discussed are the rendering of Arabic sacred texts in
Sanskrit on Indian coins, the adoption of Turko-Persian dress by
Buddhist rulers, the work of Indian stone masons in Afghanistan, and the
incorporation of carvings from Hindu and Jain temples in early Indian
mosques. Objects of Translation draws upon contemporary theories of
cosmopolitanism and globalization to argue for radically new approaches
to the cultural geography of premodern South Asia and the Islamic world.
